Bernadette

‘Hiding these things from the learned and the clever.’
(Matthew 11:25-27)

My son, Michael, graduated last week from Glasgow University with a degree in Law. I attended the ceremony and it was a grand sight to see all these young people gathered to receive the recognition of the years of study. Walking around in his gown afterwards, Michael looked very impressive and when after three hours he had to return the gown to the authorities he came back to us looking a very ordinary person again. The gown gives one the air of a certain dignity and quality no doubt.

These young people are clever and their lives will now be greatly helped by the fact that they hold a degree from such a prestigious university. Other people have other gifts, not of the academic kind. Other people are practical or artistic. Not everyone can go to university, nor should we want everyone to do so. What we do want for others is the very same as we wish for ourselves – the ability to be good and to be kind and to be wise in the living of life – To find the road to personal happiness and to social contentment.

Today we hear the Lord give thanks to God for his companions and for the fact that God reveals important things to them. He speaks of hiding things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. This is to teach us that cleverness is not the same thing as wisdom, and no matter how clever we may be in academic subjects, it is the wisdom of understanding life that really matters.

My mind always goes to the person of Saint Bernadette whenever I hear these words of the Lord. Here was a person of little or no formal education, but whose maturity of spirit and whose personal wisdom was simple and immense. After the events of the apparitions, the young girl, Bernadette, was questioned by a very well educated man, sent explicitly to delve into the strange occurrences in Lourdes, and to interrogate the young visionary in particular. His name was Vital Dutour, and he tried to convince Bernadette that her visions were nothing more than hallucinations.

It was a very understandable approach that any of us would have used to test this girl. Bernadette remained faithful to her experience and it was the simplicity with which she did so that made the greatest impression of truthfulness upon those who examined her.

Straightforward simplicity of life is a most wonderful grace to possess. It comprises a calm possession of oneself with an equally calm understanding and kindness towards others. It is a practical wisdom, a high way of living daily life. Bernadette possessed it in spades and it constitutes her greatness. It is a gift, a grace of God and there is no better grace on earth.

Today as I came away from my wife’s grave I asked the Lord for this grace. Let me be kind to everyone always I asked. If I am not, then my life has no meaning. In younger days I might have prayed for other graces and wished to exercise other energies, but now, as my body slows and the demands of life on me are so very few, my greatest ambition is to be kind.

Kindness is the simple grace that blesses the lives of others every day. There is no other good thing that we can do if not that of being kind.

2015